This week, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) will hold long-awaited hearings in the House Homeland Security Committee on Muslim cooperation with law enforcement in terror investigations. King pretty much has his mind made up before entering the hearing room – he believes that Muslim-Americans haven’t aided enough in investigations against extremism, despite a long record to the contrary. The point seems to be to treat Muslims as somehow disloyal to the United States and effectively collaborating with those who would do the country harm. It hearkens back to an era of McCarthyism, and represents a break with the perspective of even George W. Bush, who was more careful not to publicly scapegoat Muslim-Americans after 9/11.

About 500 people from interfaith and community groups held a rally in New York City yesterday to protest the King hearings. And now the Obama Administration has jumped into this debate as well.

Muslim Americans are not part of the terrorism problem facing the U.S. — they are part of the solution, a top White House official said Sunday at a Washington-area mosque [...]

(Deputy National Security Adviser Denis) McDonough said that instead of condemning whole communities, the U.S. needs to protect them from intimidation.

McDonough spoke to an interfaith forum at a Northern Virginia mosque known for its longtime relationship and cooperation with the FBI. The executive director of the center, Imam Mohamed Magid, also spoke, as did speakers from a local synagogue and a Presbyterian church.

King, who has been backtracking for weeks after the negative fallout from his hearings, tried to almost take credit for McDonough’s speech, saying it reflected his views. That’s a very generous interpretation of the two viewpoints.

It’s good that the White House wants to ensure the Muslim-American community that they will not be singled out or stigmatized by their government. And King’s backpedaling has led to Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim, becoming a witness at the hearings, along with other members of the Muslim community. So there will be a balance there.

But let’s not let King, who has been beating this drum for months now, off the hook so easily. I believe you can draw a direct line between King’s inferences of Muslim collaboration with terrorist activity and incidents like this one in Sacramento just a few days ago:

Police said Saturday that they don’t know why someone gunned down two men – frail from heart attacks and advancing years – as they slowly ambled through a quiet Elk Grove neighborhood during their daily afternoon walk.

Surinder Singh, 67, died Friday afternoon on the sidewalk along East Stockton Boulevard near Geneva Pointe Drive. Gurmej Atwal, his 78-year-old friend, was shot twice in the chest. His family said he was in critical but stable condition.

In a statement released late Saturday, Elk Grove Police Chief Robert Lehner called on witnesses to come forward and said, “We have no evidence to indicate there was a hate or bias motivation for this crime; however, the obvious Sikh appearance of the men, including the traditional Dastar headwear and lack of any other apparent motive, increasingly raise that possibility.”

Like it or not, these fear tactics can have a impact on those who are impressionable and easily stirred to anger. That’s not to say that Peter King pulled a trigger in Sacramento on Friday. It means that years of needless demonizing doesn’t just go into the ether. So if the White House wants to use their position to argue against this kind of scapegoating, that can only be positive.

However, while they’re at it, they can explain why their support for tolerance and the rule of law when it comes to Muslims ends when it comes to a private first class who hasn’t even been convicted of a crime or tried in court. The Bush Administration could never get the Muslim community past the shame of Abu Ghraib; it works no better when the victim is white and sitting naked in his cell in a military brig at Quantico. Human dignity and human rights are universal values, and rather than just talk about protecting people from intimidation and scapegoating, this Administration needs to act on it.

If we can keep this one arguing, s/he might just turn to stone at daybreak.
Thanks for the post DDay.
I am hopeful about Kieth Ellison. I wrote to him about Manning, but just the stock “Thank you for your comment”response so far.

Show your work? That’s a really silly response to PW….but,
Anyway, I just came on to share that when a system gets poisonous, sometimes there are pimples or boils that have to fester and then come to a head. It kind of feels like that’s what’s going on, to me.

It’s good that the White House wants to ensure the Muslim-American community that they will not be singled out or stigmatized by their government.

In the interest of showing that they’re aren’t just targeting brown skin people who speak a foreign language and aren’t Christians, the Obama administration will begin indefinite detentions and torture on everyone. The Obama administration is already getting this warmed up with with their torture of Bradley Manning who is a white english-speaking non-muslim right here on US soil. Yes, Obama is quite the egalitarian!

So you don’t think that Bradley Manning is being tortured? Do you not think that if Bradley Manning is being opely and publicly being treated this way, that this kind of treatment wont also happen to others that aren’t has high profile?

Indeed. Not overly fond of USA Today, but 2 elderly Sikh gentlemen were shot a few days ago in a community just south of Sacramento, CA. Even the normally rightward leaning Sacramento Bee suggests it may have been a hate crime, and the local Fox affiliate in Sacramento did what, for Fox, was (gasp) a somewhat objective commentary that indicated that many citizens may mistake Sikh’s for Muslims bc they wear turbans and have brown skin.

What the Fox affliate left out of their broadcast was *any* sort of disclaimer or commentary about why it would be utterly wrong to indulge of hate crimes of any sort, even against Muslims.

But still… here we see the possible result of fanning the flames against Muslims:

No doubt there’s plenty of Elites out there very willing to pay to fan the flames of hatred and racism bc it *distracts* the serfs from the real issues confronting our nation that has been hijacked by the upper crust.

Much easier to pit the serfs against one another, and then let the looting continue. Just saying….

“Muslim Americans”? Is the WH setting a new trend to hyphenate Americans based on religion? What’s next: Catholic-Americans, Lutheran-Americans, Hindu-Americans, Mormon-Americans? How about Shiite-Muslim-Americans and Sunni-Muslim-Americans?

Have no idea. I’m leaning *away* from any type of religious bias here and more towards the wealthy just pitting citizens against one another wherever possible. Clearly the PTB have spent an inordinate amount of time, energy and money super-demonizing Muslims since 9/11. I’m not thinking, in this case, that it has much to do with being Jewish or not.

If the serfs are distracted with hating Muslims (just because), then the lose sight of the ongoing plunder by the elites. That’s my thesis.

That’s what the Obama administration does where at best they rebrand their continuation of Bush administration policies by trying to use pretty words and phrases then they call their wordsmithing “change” and at worst – which is quite often – they go even more extreme than Bush policies.

I find it astounding that these right wing blowhards work on the theory that since somebody is a Muslim they must know about the next attack. That would be like me being caucasian knowing that McVeigh was going to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City.

Since King is working on that assumption, why didn’t he warn us about Oklahoma City?

The United States “foreign terrorist problem” is the direct result of our myopic policies of global economics and foreign relations. To wit the Middle East uprising are in fact colonial uprisings. We support dictatorships and are surprised when the lunatic fringe of those brutal dictatorships decides to attack the architects of their economic prisons.

I have a Muslim neighbor who is a college professor. Over the past 4-5 years we have had many lengthy discussions, including a few about religion. I’m pretty confident he would not be able to assist any of the alphabet agencies in tracking down Muslim extremists.

As hate-mongers like King rachet up their rhetoric, I become concerned for him and his family.

“Please link to proof for your assertion that I’m a Republican; something, anything.”

Come on, you’re just being silly. PW says your response is typical Republican. The sensible response to that is to affirm it, deny it, or ignore it. Asking someone to prove to you that you’re a Republican is silly. Rafe, don’t you know?

To the hate merchants, “Islam” is a single, monolithic bloc that supports terrorism and “hates us for our freedom”. You know, sorta like every Christian in the world supported and participated in the holocaust.

I speak of people who would perpetuate acts like the WTC bombings. That is the lunatic fringe. Islam is just a religious foil to get the low info crowd on board to do stupid shit just like christianity is used here. Al Qaida is Hutaree. While Hutaree would want to go blow up an IRS building, Islamic extremist want to blow up a financial center.

It’s complicated, but while there is a relationship and references, there’s not 100% overlap. Further, depending on the legal school, you get different judgments. There are 4 different schools of thought amongst the Sunni.

Peter King’s hateful rhetoric works in cooperation with Obama’s murderous actions: His claims that he is allowed to order murders of Muslims anywhere in the world, even if they are American Muslims, is no better than King’s hate speech. In fact, it’s worse.

Excellent point. It flows downhill. Obama and Clinton are still invoking 9-11 to justify their killing ways, so King is simply, loyally, doing his part. And Gitmo — they’re turrists because we say they are, plus they have strange appearances and names that, you know, fit the profile.

Every repressive government must foment their boogymen. I grew up during the “Red Scare.” I came along after the “duck & cover”campaign, but I do remember people building bomb shelters.

Revisionist history has been going on for many years, Who is the modern day Winston Smith whose job it is to edit textbooks and other historical records? I read 2-3 books a week, 95% non-fiction, and find myself constantly challenged to sort fact from fiction.

Bear with me because I’m involved in a stream of consciousness. The 5 % fiction I read is Tom Clancy and others of his genre. Let me bring this back to current events.

Kevin Freeman, Commissioned by the Pentagon, just came out with a paper suggesting the economic crash in 2008 might have been triggered by terrorists. He was all over the map with suspects: Jihadists, Osama bin Laden, ex KGB agents and China (funny how it most often tracks back to China).

What I found most revealing in Freeman’s interviews is that if you substitute Japan with China you come up with a major plot line in Clancy’s “Debt of Honor.” A mega-wealthy Japanese industrialist seeking revenge against the U S buys a group of mutual funds and proceeds to crash the U S financial markets.

As much as his books are enjoyable, his assumptions and female characters are terrible. Also, pretty much everything in the novel series on Ryan was just another piece in the puzzle of creating his perfect ultra president.

agree and also that reference to the “fringe” has me puzzled – how can such large segments of indigenous population be labelled “fringe”? and as for “lunatic”, since when acting on universally acknowledged human aspirations have become lunacy?

sometimes i wonder if access to public education has created more orwellian wordsmiths than critical thinkers

yes, sharia is common law and has two important elements – the hadith and the quran – the former sets out legal practices actually implemented but only has meaning/relevance in a temporal context while the latter embodies the spirit that allows the precedence of the hadith to be reinterpreted as that temporal context shifts

for the right to fume against the sharia is essentially a denial of the basis on which western jurisprudence is founded – common law